The making of Paul Ryan

One good way to understand how 42-year-old Paul Ryan vaulted over a generation of politicians into the top tier of national Republican politics is to dive into some numbers.

One hundred ninety times. That’s how often the Wisconsin lawmaker’s name appeared in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal between Election Day 2008 — when a Republican rout at the polls left the conservative intelligentsia urgently looking for a new star — and the day this month when Mitt Romney tapped Ryan his running mate.

Another revealing number: Ryan and his plans for overhauling the federal budget drew at least 72 mentions in the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, according to a POLITICO count. There were at least as many references in the equally influential National Review.

These billings, in turn, helped Ryan drive an even bigger number: 1,050 is how many times Ryan and the Ryan budget were talked up on Fox News.

There are legions of smart and ambitious politicians who could never dream of this kind of publicity who can testify that numbers like this do not just happen by accident.

In Ryan’s case, say people who have worked closely with him, they are the result of a years-long effort to cultivate relationships with a small but influential corps of commentators, policy intellectuals and impresarios of the conservative movement.

Ryan invites these people to off-the-record dinner briefings to talk about ideas and his policy proposals. He calls them to say how much he liked their articles. He attends their going-away parties and hires young people from their staffs. Above all, he has made clear that he takes these people seriously and wants to be taken seriously by them.

And these Washington and New York influentials — including writers Bill Kristol and Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard, Rich Lowry of National Review and policy provocateurs like Bill Bennett and Pete Wehner — have repaid the favor. In the process, they have helped Ryan illuminate a path to power much different than the traditional strategy of bill-passing, logrolling, and above all loyal time-serving that historically was the way to win influence on Capitol Hill.

“Ryan developed a fan base outside of Congress,” explained conservative editor Yuval Levin. “He seems to be taken seriously by people who other members take seriously.”

“Public policy and intellectual types are susceptible to flattery and the bar is not particularly high,” quipped Ramesh Ponnuru, a National Review writer who knows and admires Ryan.

The GOP, long a royalist party that rewards those who wait their turn, has been upended in recent years by powerful ideological and technological forces, and nobody better symbolizes the new ways in which power is obtained than Ryan.

His rise represents the most significant triumph yet of what could be called the “outside-in” approach to navigating Washington. Because of the attention and praise given to his ideas by external validators like The Wall Street Journal — whose editorial page editor Paul Gigot is a Ryan fan and fellow Wisconsin native — Ryan not only elbowed his way into the top tier of GOP politics but made his policy vision the centerpiece of the House GOP agenda.

If Ryan were the typical House Budget Committee chairman, in contrast, he might win quiet praise on Capitol Hill for being collegial or serious-minded, but there would be scant chance that he would have been urged to run for president — as many conservative writers urged Ryan to run this year — or been selected as the vice presidential nominee. There was no fever of excitement for Republican Jim Nussle of Iowa, or Democrat John Spratt of South Carolina, two politicians who in recent years preceded Ryan as chairman of the budget panel.